serious about transforming her into a crusty, but that one percent was amusing to work on. She might pass muster wearing a dread-lock wig, he suggested, and if the CID’s wardrobe didn’t run to combat trousers she could get away with black leggings with plenty of holes. He was sure that the RSPCA could supply her with a vicious-looking pooch; she definitely needed a dog. He strolled on stolidly, embroidering the tease all the way. But behind the poker face his mood was improving and it wasn’t that beer in the Roman Bar that had made the difference.
Julie wasn’t spared until they reached the nick. They were crossing the reception hall when Diamond spotted something behind the protective glass at the public enquiry point.
“I don’t believe this.” But he still marched over for a closer inspection.
Another of the woolen bees was positioned just behind the glass, goggling at him with its ridiculous eyes.
He rapped on the glass until the constable on duty came over.
“Who left this here?”
“What’s that, Mr. Diamond?”
“This bee.”
“That’s a bumblebee, sir.”
“I don’t care what it is. Who is responsible for it?”
The constable frowned.
Diamond had turned flamingo pink. “Whose idea of a joke is it? That’s all I’m asking.”
“It’s no joke, sir.”
“You’re telling me, laddie. When I find the perpetrator he won’t be laughing.”
There was a pause before the constable summoned the confidence to say, “Didn’t you get a bee of your own, Mr. Diamond?”
This polite enquiry went unanswered.
“Everyone should have got one this morning. It’s Operation Bumblebee.”
Diamond’s eyes resembled two dashes in a line of Morse code. Behind him, Julie Hargreaves lowered her face and squeezed her arms across her stomach in a desperate attempt to remain serious.
“You can have this bumblebee if you like, sir,” the hapless duty constable added to his list of offenses. “We’ve got a box of them back here. The poster comes with it.”
Something had to be done, and fast.
Without trusting herself to speak, Julie touched Diamond on the arm and drew his attention to a large poster that dominated the cluster of notices to his right. There was a cartoon figure of a bee in a
police helmet and boots. The wording ran: SUPER BEE SAYS TO BEAT THE BURGLAR WE NEED YOUR HELP. BUZZ THE BEELINE FREE ON 0800 555 111.
He studied it in silence.
Eventually Julie managed to get out the words, “Public relations.”
The constable said, “If you don’t mind me saying so, it isn’t just PR, ma’am. Since we started Bumblebee last year, the break-ins have dropped dramatically. There are five men in the team, working with Sergeant Wood, the Bumblebee officer.”
“The what?” said Diamond.
“Every report of a break-in is fed through a central hive- that’s the computer, of course. Go upstairs and you can hear it humming.”
“God help us!” murmured Diamond.
“And then the villains get stung. Would you like a bee, Mr. Diamond?”
Diamond shook his head and allowed Julie to lead him away.
“Four years is a heck of a time,” Marcus Martin declared in the polished accent of a fee-paying school.
And a heck of a lot of women, thought Diamond. They had found Britt Strand’s last boyfriend in the paddocks behind his Elizabethan manor house, undoubtedly one of the few brick mansions in the whole county, its triple- gabled facade glowing bright orange in the afternoon sun and blood-red where the shadow of an oak fell across the wall. Marcus Martin was with a young woman who was mounted on a black mare, in a schooling ring surfaced with wood chippings and laid out with practice jumps. Immaculately kitted as the equestrienne was, in black velvet hunting cap, black coat, white stock and antelope-colored jodhpurs, she hadn’t succeeded in moving the horse and didn’t seem to be trying, thus giving the impression that the riding lesson wasn’t her main reason for being there. The way Martin helped her dismount with both hands around her thigh reinforced this impression. He unfastened the tack for her and sent her toward the stables with a push on her rump. She didn’t object.
“But you remember me, I expect?” said Diamond.
“Too well, my friend, too well.”
He introduced Julie, who was awarded the doubtful compliment of a lingering head-to-toe inspection.
Martin said with his eyes still on her, “It’s hard to credit.”
“What is?” Diamond asked.
“Inspector Hargreaves.”
“It wouldn’t be if you were evading arrest,” said Diamond in a tribute that almost made up for the teasing earlier. “No doubt you’ve heard that Mountjoy is on the run from Albany?”
Martin hadn’t heard and he couldn’t see how it affected him.
“It doesn’t,” said Diamond. “It affects me, though. I’m the fall guy who may have to speak to him. He claims he’s innocent, of course.”
“What does the wretched man want-a retrial?”
“He wouldn’t get that.”
Martin fed the mare a couple of sugar lumps and waved to a stable lad to take her back to her stall. Then he suggested they go inside the house, where they would be warmer.
“I’m trying to refresh my memory of the case,” Diamond told him as if the facts had all deserted him. For once he was being as amiable as the television detective Columbo, whose style of questioning he aspired to, but only rarely approached. “You’re the obvious man to ask about Britt.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Martin. “Our relationship was short and to the point. Weeks, rather than months.”
“You don’t mind talking about it?”
“Not in the least. But I don’t see what bearing it has.”
In the house, before a flickering log fire in a recessed stone fireplace almost as large as the office Diamond and Julie shared at the nick, Marcus Martin expanded on this. “I respected Britt. She was a class act. Extremely pretty and considerably brighter than I am. She was a damned fine horsewoman, too.” There was genuine admiration in his tone. “She rode regularly. They take their riding seriously in Sweden. Anyway, Britt was keen to do some jumping and someone at the stables offered to bring her out here. I have a show-jumping layout- not the one you saw, but a full course-the best for miles around. Perhaps you noticed it when you drove in. That’s how we met. After she had exercised my best stallion, and cooled off with a Perrier-she was TT, you know-she said she’d like to ring for a taxi. She didn’t possess a car. Naturally I offered to drive her home, and I did.” He paused and gave Julie a wink. “The next morning.”
“This was when-in September?”
“Around then. Maybe August. As I said, it was ages ago. The whole thing didn’t last more than three wild and steamy weeks. It was over at least a week before she was killed.”
“You told me at the time that you drifted apart,” recalled Diamond. “It’s hard to reconcile that with three wild and steamy weeks.”
“Did I? Then I suppose it was true. Yes, I’d been through my repertoire, so to speak. I wouldn’t say we were getting bored with each other by Week Three, but we only had one thing in common.”
“You mean the riding?”
He grinned. “She was about to start college, and I had a weekend trip to Belgium as reserve to the British show-jumping team and we didn’t fix another date. Simple as that. There was no argument, thank God, or I might have felt guilty later. After I got back from Brussels I started up with someone else.”
“The young lady who supplied your alibi.”
“Yes, indeed. She died, you know. Meningitis.”
“Your girlfriends don’t have much luck. You met this one at a party, if I remember, and went home with
